


Ars Longa

by bisexualcyborg



Category: Sherlock (TV), These Violent Delights - Fanfiction
Genre: (though it's actually much less violent than TVD), Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Chronically ill character, Depression, F/F, F/M, FANFICCEPTION, Fanfiction for a Fanfiction, Fluffy Smut, HIV/AIDS, M/M, Mention of transphobic violence, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 19:35:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3180620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualcyborg/pseuds/bisexualcyborg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Caroline Bramwell (whom you'll remember as the doctor in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/pasiphile/pseuds/pasiphile">pasiphile</a>'s These Violent Delights), before and after she met Jim Moriarty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ars Longa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pasiphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pasiphile/gifts).
  * Inspired by [These Violent Delights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/910519) by [pasiphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pasiphile/pseuds/pasiphile). 



> This is a birthday gift for my darling [pasiphile](http://archiveofourown.org/users/pasiphile/pseuds/pasiphile).  
> Basically, I fell in love with one of her original characters, and I wrote my headcanons about her down in fic-form. The headcanons are actually based on little details mentioned both in [These Violent Delights](http://archiveofourown.org/works/910519) and [Mirror Mirror](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2372312), but I'm not going to list them all here because even I am not that self-absorbed.  
> This fic will make absolutely no sense if you haven't read Pasi's work (seriously, go read it, she's all kinds of brilliant).  
> Pasi, i'm delighted that you liked this, and I wish you many many more years of writing and inspiring other people through your works.
> 
> All my thanks to [221brosiewilde](http://archiveofourown.org/users/221brosiewilde/pseuds/221brosiewilde) for the beta.

I.

Caroline slams her pen down on her desk with rather exaggerated force and tries not to growl in frustration.

Nathalie, her roommate, giggles. “You okay?”

“Obviously not.” Caroline scrubs a hand over her forehead, trying to ease the throbbing behind it. “How are we supposed to remember the protein structure of every single virus in existence?”

Nathalie, whose upper body is hanging off the couch with her legs hooked over the backrest, tilts her head back to look at Caroline.

“I don’t think it’s every single virus in existence,” she says thoughtfully.

“Close to it.”

“Yeah…” Nathalie kicks her feet against the wall, upsetting a Sarah Moon picture in the process. “You look funny upside-down.”

“Then sit right side up?” Caroline suggests.

“Nah. I’m hoping that increasing the blood flow to my brain will boost my memory.”

Caroline gives a shake of her head. “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.”

“Hush, you. It’s my best hope.” Nathalie tilts her head back even further, her fringe flopping back and almost sweeping the floor.

“No it’s not,” Caroline says. “You’re really clever and you studied really well. Besides, I thought you were going over to Lauren’s tonight? Pre-exam shag and all that, endorphins boosting your performance, all that tripe you’re constantly trying to make me believe?”

“I’ll have you know that actually works,” Lauren insists, wagging a finger at Caroline. “You should try it, get laid tonight, you’ll see if I’m lying.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, Nat, remember?”

“Who said you need a boyfriend to get laid?”

Caroline sighs. “Fine, I don’t have the time to call a random bloke over last-minute to give me a few screaming orgasms so I’ll pass my exam.”

“Oh well, don’t worry,” Nathalie says reassuringly. “You always pass either way.” 

“Yeah, because I study.” She gives Nathalie a pointed look. 

“Good point.” Nathalie wiggles herself around so she’s sitting upright again, and opens her binder. 

Caroline smiles internally. For all her cocky attitude, Nat is very easily convinced to act like a good girl. Caroline is almost disappointed – she had welcomed the light conversation as a much-needed break from cramming.

With a small sigh, she clicks her pen against her front teeth and concentrates on her proteins. Guanylyl transferase, trypsin,…

“But if all else fails,” Nathalie says behind her, “you know where I keep my vibrators.”

Caroline throws the pen at her head.

 

 

II. 

Caroline unbuttons her white coat and hangs it on the peg on the wall. White coats are too medical, and she isn’t Henry’s doctor; she’s his friend. She throws a look at the clock – a quarter past seven already. With some luck, she’ll get to see Henry for a small hour before they kick her out. She’d hoped for more, since her shift was supposed to be over at six, for once. But that’s to be expected for trainees, isn’t it? Working overtime, doing the jobs no one wanted to do, walking around like zombies and generally fucking up their physical and mental health. Because “we all did it before you,” didn’t they?

Caroline runs a hand through her hair in exasperation and locks the office door behind her. She waves goodbye to Fatma, who is rolling a blood pressure metre into Mrs Lucas’s room. 

Fatma waves back. “Good evening, Caroline. Going to see your friend?”

“Yes, I am. It’s not often that I’ve finished early enough for visiting hours, but I’m lucky tonight.”

“How is he?” Fatma asks. 

Caroline shrugs sadly. “Not very good, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.” Fatma reaches out and pats Caroline’s arm. “Such a horrible disease…”

“You can say that, yeah.” Caroline smiles at Fatma, a tight, slightly forced smile. She likes Fatma, and she knows she really means well, but she’s heard too many generalities in the last few weeks. She can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like for Henry.

She says goodbye to Fatma and walks down the corridor, to the elevator. The ward for pulmonary diseases is on the sixth floor, and that’s where Henry is at the moment. Advanced stage pneumonia. He’s not going to make it – everyone knows it. Even he does.

The door to Henry’s room is open, so she knocks on the doorframe to announce herself. She nods politely at Henry’s roommate. He’s even younger than Henry; twenty-five, at most. He has a cannula in his nose, and he is too weak to nod back. He smiles instead, a sweet, feeble smile. Caroline is suddenly submerged in anger. She hates this disease. _Hates_ it. It causes so much pain in a community that’s already so vulnerable. It targets young people, good people, who die an ugly, painful death when life should have had so much more in store for them.

Caroline takes a deep breath to calm herself and walks over to Henry’s bed. It’s only thanks to months of experience with schooling her facial expressions for patients’ benefit that she manages to keep her face from falling. Henry can apparently still breathe without assistance since he doesn’t have a cannula, but he looks so _weak_. He’s as pale as a sheet, leaning back in his slightly raised bed, lips thin and eyes hollow. 

His face lights up when he sees her. “Caroline!” 

His voice sounds hoarse and raspy, but there is genuine happiness in it. Caroline smiles and leans over to kiss his cheek. He tries to lift up to kiss her back, but falls back against his pillow with a soft grunt. 

“So, how are you?” Caroline asks, pulling up a chair to sit by his side.

Henry shifts his head on the pillow to look at her. “Good!” he says with a smile. “It’s my lucky day, apparently. Lauren visited today, and now you! Did you know she’s a translator for some big law firm now?”

“Yes, Nathalie told me.” Caroline grins. “Succumbing to the crushing pressure of capitalism just like the rest of us!”

Henry snorts. “Frank would be so disappointed. Give her a fiery speech about solidarity and changing the world.” His expression turns sour. “Solidarity, indeed. He broke up with me, you know? Couldn’t stand the pressure, he said. Can you believe that?”

Sadly, Caroline can. Frank is all about the ideals, and not much about the actions. She wants to take the tube to his flat and punch him in the face until his pretty nose breaks. But that wouldn’t be helpful, not really, so she wordlessly grips Henry’s hand.

Henry smiles, a grim, crooked smile. “He could at least have waited until I croaked. Wouldn’t have made a big difference.”

Caroline is used to it, God knows she is. So many patients joke about death – the ones who don’t obsessively avoid the subject, that is. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like a punch to the gut every single time.

Henry saves her from answering by pointing at the cookies on his bedside table. “Have one,” he says. “Lauren brought them for me.” 

He probably noticed her discomfort, and Caroline is grateful. She knows how to deal with this professionally, but this is not professional. This is Henry. Henry, who cooked for her when her shifts got too long, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of noir movies, whose hip thrust puts Mick Jagger to shame. She doesn’t know how to deal with this. 

She takes a cookie and offers one to Henry, but he waves it away.

“Not very hungry.”

The last word is drowned out by a sudden coughing fit. The coughs are rattling, wracking his entire body, and Caroline suddenly realises, really realises, on a visceral level, that Henry is going to die. She bites her lips, and keeps a straight face.

When the nurse politely asks her to leave, over half an hour after the official end of visiting hours, Caroline locks herself in the staff bathroom, and cries.

***

Henry dies four days later. Caroline hasn’t had the time to visit him again. 

At his funeral, she and Nathalie take turns letting a wailing Lauren cling to them. Frank gives a grandiloquent speech about how brave and inspiring Henry was, and Caroline punches him in the face. It feels immensely satisfying.

Henry’s parents aren’t there. 

 

III. 

During her last year as a trainee, Caroline constantly feels exhausted. Everyone she complains to says it’s normal, she’s working so hard, that’s to be expected for a medical trainee, everyone feels this way. 

She survives on coffee and not much else, and still gains ten pounds in two months. In March, her period doesn’t come, and for a few terrifying hours she thinks she might be pregnant. She hasn’t had sex in over two months, and she’s always careful, but she still spends the trip to the pharmacy and back panicking about raising a child as a single mother, and a doctor at that. 

Mercifully, the sign that shows up on the little screen is a “-“. The relief makes her knees wobble and she has to sit down on the toilet seat before she loses her balance. 

A few days later, as she buttons her coat, her fingers brush against a hard swelling in her neck. The words “thyroid cancer” flash through her head – oh god, it fits the symptoms – and she picks up her phone to book appointments for scans.

She can come in that same day; perks of being a doctor. They put her under a scanner and perform a few blood tests. When it’s over, they sent her to the endocrinologist, on the second floor.

The doctor spreads the sheets of paper in front of Caroline. She taps her finger on the image of the scan.

“Look,” she says, “your thyroid is enlarged. And if we look at the results of your blood test,” she points at a chart of hormones, “your thyroid hormone is extremely low, and some antibodies are, conversely, abnormally high.”

Something clicks inside Caroline’s brain. She saw this in class, in immunology.

“Hashimoto’s disease,” she says.

The doctor nods. “Exactly. It’s an auto-immune disease – your antibodies attack your own thyroid. It’s nothing too bad, don’t worry. You just have to take a Synthroid tablet every day, and come back here for regular check-ups. The effects shouldn’t be too bad. The main problem is fatigue, and potentially infertility. You’re at higher risk for depression, too.”

Caroline doesn’t really care about the infertility – she doesn’t want children anyway – but she does goggle at the doctor when she says the fatigue isn’t bad. She has felt like a zombie for months now. And the depression… Well, she’ll deal with that when it happens, won’t she?

But indeed, after a few weeks of taking her pills, it gets manageable. Her hormone levels stay stable, and she feels more functional. She starts having the energy for a life outside of work again. It feels amazing.   
IV. 

She falls in love for the first time in Paris. It’s such a cliché that it’s borderline ridiculous, but it’s true nonetheless. 

She meets him at the A&E of the Hôtel-Dieu. They needed an English-speaking GP, she wanted to live abroad for a while. It’s perfect. 

Bachir isn’t a patient; he’s accompanying one. The boy has two black eyes and a broken arm, and when he hands over his ID, he says, “I know that’s not what is says, Doctor, but my name is Louis.” 

His voice is pleading, but Bachir – Caroline doesn’t know his name yet, then, that will come later – looks menacing, hovering protectively behind his friend.

Caroline smiles. “Please sit down, Louis. Let’s patch you up.” Bachir looks surprised for a second, but then he nods approvingly. 

Once Louis’s arm is in a plaster, she sits him down on the operating table and beckons Bachir over. 

“Were you there?” she asks him.

It’s Louis who answers. “No, he wasn’t. I managed to find a phonebox and called him. He brought me here.”

“If I had been there,” Bachir pipes in, “I wouldn’t have looked like this.” He gestures at his unharmed face. “They would have had a field day, two freaks for the price of one.”

The bitterness in his voice, the obvious hurt it masks, makes her want to pummel every bigoted arsehole on the face of the earth. But she can’t. “I’m sorry,” she says instead.

Bachir smiles at her. “Not your fault, is it?” He has a really lovely smile. _This is not the appropriate time or place for this, Caroline_ , she berates herself.

She turns back to Louis. “Do you want to press charges against your attackers?” she asks.

“No.” Louis’s answer is automatic; he doesn’t even consider it. “It would only make things worse.”

Caroline nods. She’s not surprised. He’s probably right, and besides, it’s not even certain that the police will help him. 

“If you ever change your mind,” she says, “you know where to find me. I’ll testify.”

***

She meets him again by accident, at an exhibit at the Grand Palais. They make small talk and she learns that Bachir is a historian, who works at the Bibliothèque de Paris. His parents are Algerian and fled the country during the independence war. Bachir doesn’t understand why they fled to the very country they were at war with, but then again, who is he to judge? And there’s the language thing, isn’t there? 

They walk through the exhibit together, barely paying attention to the paintings, and when they’re standing outside again, Caroline tucks her hair behind her ear and asks, “Can I buy you coffee?”

Bachir says yes. They go to one of those absurdly expensive cafés on the Champs-Elysées, with mahogany parquet and seats upholstered in green velvet. Bachir laughs and says he feels like a tourist; real Parisians don’t do stuff like that. They linger an hour over their tiny cups of coffee, and when there’s not a drop left, Bachir puts a hand over hers.

“Do you want to have another coffee at my place?” he asks. “I promise it’ll be bigger than those ones.”

Caroline grins. “With pleasure.”

Bachir breaks his promise, but it’s not his fault. Caroline doesn’t give him any chance to get to the coffee maker. As soon as they make it through the front door, she puts a hand on his cheek and leans in for a kiss.

Bachir wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her down, kissing her back hungrily. His other hand grips her hip, pulling her closer against him. Caroline runs her tongue over his bottom lip, and his mouth parts willingly. Unsurprisingly, he tastes likes strong coffee. 

When they pull apart, they stare at each other for a few seconds, just a bit too long for comfort. Then, Bachir gulps audibly.

“Bedroom?” he asks without quite meeting her eyes. 

Caroline kisses him again. “I’d like that very much.”

The way his entire face lights up makes her giggle, just a little, against the top of his head. His fine, dark hair moves with her breath.

Bachir takes her hand and leads her through the tiny hallway, into his bedroom. There’s just enough room for a double bed and a bedside table, nothing more. 

Caroline flops down on the bed and pulls Bachir down with her. He falls on top of her with a slight “oomph’ and she laughs again. 

He pokes her in the ribs, “Stop laughing at me!” and closes his mouth over hers to silence her giggles.

It works. Her hands grip his shoulders, then move lower to his hips and pull him tighter against her. 

Bachir shifts a bit and slots his leg between her thighs. She grinds up against him and fuck, that feels marvellous. Her guttural moan makes Bachir giggle, and she smothers the sound by pulling his head down into the crook of her neck. Bachir gets the message and nibbles at her collarbone. Caroline throws her head back, baring her neck to him, and her hips buck against his thigh. Her cunt feels slick against the wet fabric of her panties.

“Not that I’m not – ah! – utterly enjoying this,” she pants into Bachir’s ear, “but I don’t think this is doing a lot for you?”

He looks down at her and smirks. “You think I’m not getting off on you squirming and moaning underneath me?”

Cocky idiot. Caroline can’t help the grin that spreads over her face. “You know what I mean,” she says, fondly rolling her eyes.

Bachir braces himself on his forearms and eyes her consideringly. “How do you feel about dildo’s?”

“You on me or me on you?” She hasn’t ever slept with someone who didn’t have a penis, but there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?

“Me on you,” Bachir answers. Then he winks. “To begin with.”

“Let’s,” Caroline says. 

Bachir rolls off her and reaches into the bedside table. He pulls out a black dildo, one with a shorter bit standing upright from the shaft. Caroline recognises the type; she’s seen it lying around in Lauren and Nathalie’s flat more times than she’s comfortable with.

Bachir triumphantly waves the toy about. “Chop chop, clothes off!” he says.

“Bossy,” Caroline scoffs, but she unbuttons her trousers and eases them over her hips together with her panties. Then, she sits up to pull her shirt over her head. 

Bachir is staring at her, looking mesmerised. The look in his eyes makes something flutter in her chest. 

She cocks an eyebrow at him. “Why are you still dressed?” she asks.

“Yes ma’am.” Bachir drops the dildo on the bed and takes his clothes off in record time. As soon as he’s naked, he rolls on top of her again. He trails kisses along her neck, down her breastbone, and then to the side, to suck gently on her left nipple. Caroline gasps and tangles her fingers in Bachir’s hair. 

“Good?” Bachir asks against her skin.

“Fuck, yes.”

Bachir looks up at her, smirking self-satisfiedly. His hand trails down her stomach, through the coarse hair between her legs, and when he pushes two fingers inside of her, she groans, long and deep. 

“Like that, do you?” Bachir teases.

Caroline is past teasing, now. “Fuck me, come on, just fuck me.”

“As you wish.” Bachir sits back on his heels and Caroline makes a small, bereft noise when his fingers slip out of her. But her disappointment is soon forgotten, because Bachir spreads his knees to slip the short part of the dildo inside himself and fuck, that’s really, really hot.

Caroline spreads her legs too, looking Bachir straight in the eye. “Fuck me,” she tells him again. Bachir grins and lies down on top of her, weight braced on his elbows. 

When he carefully guides the dildo inside her cunt, Caroline moans brokenly and pushes up, which makes Bachir moan in turn. She wraps her legs around his waist, fingers gripping his shoulders.

The movement makes Bachir lose his balance and his hands slip, making him land on Caroline’s chest. 

“Whoops, sorry,” he says, and tries to move up again, but she clings to him. 

“No, stay.”

Bachir smiles, a soft, tender smile. “Okay.” 

He rolls his hips into hers, his pelvic bone dragging over her clit. She shifts her hips just a bit, so the friction is perfect, slippery skin against slippery skin.

Bachir gives a small sigh, an almost surprised “Oh.” It makes Caroline feel impossibly fond, and she buries her face in his shoulder to hide her smile.

Bachir comes first, with a sound that’s something between a moan and a shout. His hips still for a moment, leaving Caroline right on the brink of orgasm, but then he starts moving again. It takes less than five thrusts before Caroline is coming too, head thrown back in a wordless shout. 

Bachir slips the dildo out of her cunt and kisses her forehead. He rolls off of her, pulls the toy out of himself and drops it on the floor. 

Caroline lays on the bed, panting softly. Bachir’s breathing is heavy too, which makes her feel ridiculously proud of herself.

When she feels like she can move without dissolving into a puddle of goop, she gestures towards the door. “Do you want me to…?”

She doesn’t actually think Bachir want her to leave, but she’d rather check than make him uncomfortable. To her relief, his voice sounds shocked when he answers “No!”

He rolls over to his side and tangles his fingers with her own. “Stay.”

Caroline stays.

***

The third time she sleeps over at Bachir’s place, they both oversleep. Bachir wakes her up by gently nuzzling at her neck.

“Caro,” he whispers into her ear, “Caro, wake up.”

“What is it?” she asks through a yawn.

“We forgot to set the alarm. It’s half past nine.”

Caroline shoots up. “Fuck!”

“Well, we’re late anyway,” Bachir begins, “I thought we could –“ but Caroline is already in the bathroom.

“Well, you’re enthusiastic about work,” Bachir says.

“That’s not it,” Caroline yells over the sound of running water as she fills a glass. “I’ll gladly have lazy morning sex with you, but I need to take my pill before I forget.”

“Your pill?” Bachir sounds surprised. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t exactly have the equipment to get you pregnant.”

Caroline giggles and pokes her head around the doorframe. “Not that pill, you dolt,” she tells him. “It’s Synthroid. Artificial thyroid hormone. I have a thyroid malfunction disease.”

“Oh.” Bachir eyes her with concern. “Will you be okay?”

“Yeah, of course I will.” She smiles at him, teasingly. “Are you worried about me, Bachir?” It’s strangely endearing.

“Of course I’m worried about you,” Bachir says. His face is utterly serious. “I like you, you know.”

A wide, delighted grin spreads across Caroline’s face. If she were the blushing type, her face would be bright red. She swallows her pill and drains the glass of water to regain her composure, and then replies, “I like you too.”

***

Caroline never planned to stay in Paris forever. She likes England too much; she misses London, she misses her friends. Bachir and her both knew this wouldn’t last. Her contract with the Hôtel-Dieu lasted three years, and she always knew she would not renew it. She also always knew Bachir wouldn’t leave Paris. Despite his ancestry, despite the way he sometimes talks about France and the French, this is his country. He loves it here.

They both cry at the airport. The woman who registers Caroline’s two heavy suitcases thankfully pretends not to notice; then again, she’s probably used to scenes like this. 

They renew their promises to write and call as often as possible for what’s probably the millionth time, but this is still a break-up. The first Caroline has ever lived through. She had no idea it would hurt so badly, and she suddenly feels guilty about all the times she rolled her eyes at her friends when they cried for days over a failed relationship. Her relationship with Bachir is not a failure, not really, but neither of them has the temperament for a long-distance relationship. 

When it’s time to board the plane, Bachir doesn’t kiss her. He wraps his arms around her instead, hugging her tight. Caroline clings to him, sobbing into his hair. But when the speakers announce the last boarding call, she breaks away and wipes her tears.

“I love you,” she tells Bachir.

Bachir’s voice breaks on a sob when he answers, “I love you too.”

 

V.

After five months of feeling numb, Caroline realises that she’s not just sad. There’s something seriously wrong. Her endocrinologist’s voice keeps going round in her head, saying “You’re at higher risk for depression,” but she can’t be depressed, can she? Her patients who are depressed have it so much worse than she does; this is just post-break-up blues. 

She finally admits to herself that no, it isn’t, when a teenage girl walks into her office, sits down gingerly across from her and, looking terrified, rolls up her shirtsleeves, and Caroline’s first thought is _Ugh, not another one_. 

She is appalled at herself. Everyone has always congratulated her on her empathy – how can she be so callous now? 

Caroline reassures the girl and refers her to a psychologist. When she picks up the phone to make the call, she books an appointment for herself too.

Therapy helps. It’s a struggle, at first, fitting her sessions into her overly busy schedule, but she sticks to them religiously. It would be rather hypocritical of her to berate her patients for not taking their therapy seriously, and not follow her own advice.

Her psychologist tells her to cultivate her social life, so she lets Nathalie drag her to gay clubs to hand out information pamphlets about safe sex. They used to do this together after Henry died, but Caroline stopped when she was in Paris. She was too busy, between Bachir, her friends and the irregular hours of working at an A&E. 

To her relief, she finds that she still likes it. It’s less vital than it was in the eighties, what they’re doing, but she still feels useful. She still feels like she’s helping people, even though some of them tell her to mind her own business. They have a point, they really do, but for every educated, confident man, there’s a boy who doesn’t know what he’s getting into, or doesn’t know how to say no.

She even starts going on her own, when Nathalie is on watch, or when she wants to stay home with Lauren. Huddled inside her coat, she spends hours in half-lit alleys, trying to ignore the couples – sometimes more – going at it around her, and handing out pamphlets that have a 50% chance of ending up on the pavement. She feels like she has a purpose again, doing something that’s not just her professional duty.

And that’s how she meets Jimmy. He’s not the first boy she’s taken home because he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Neither is he the only one who’s assumed she wanted sex in return. He is, however, the first to leave such a lasting impression. He tells her he’s going to rule London, one day, and although he’s sixteen at most and even scrawnier than Bachir was, she believes him. He calls her Caro, too, and even though his build is the only thing he shares with Bachir, it still pulls at her heartstrings. 

So when he leaves the next morning, she gives him the address of her practice and tells him to come see her if he needs it. She has a feeling he will.

***

It’s almost a year before she sees him again. One day, she walks into her waiting room to usher the next patient in, and he’s sitting there, dripping blood onto the carpet and glaring daggers at the other patients.

Caroline bites her lip to keep from bursting out laughing. She should probably feel bad about it – the boy does seem to be seriously harmed, after all – but it’s just too amusing, really. Jimmy’s dark scowl, the other patients cowering behind their out-dated magazines, trying to act like a teenager bleeding all over cheap waiting room upholstery is nothing out of the ordinary. 

She waves an apologetic hand at Mrs. Sand, who should be next in line, and tells Jimmy to follow her. 

Pointing at the examination table, she says, “Right, get your kit off.”

Jimmy raises an eyebrow. “Really, Doctor,” he drawls. “How unprofessional.”

“I’m not in the mood, Jimmy.” She snaps on a pair of sterile gloves while he takes of his shirt, and walks over to him. 

There’s a serious cut across his chest. Thankfully, his ribs deflected the knife, so there’s no damage to organs, but still. It doesn’t look pretty.

“That’s going to need stitches,” Caroline says. She disinfects the wound and injects anaesthetic around the borders. 

Jimmy scoffs. “I can take it without the numbing, you know.”

Caroline looks up at him. “I know you can. But you don’t need to.” 

She tears open the wrapper around the sterile thread and needle, and gets to work. It takes a bit of time – it’s a long gash – but Caroline is good at stitches. She’s patient and has very steady hands. 

When the wound is closed, she tapes a bandage over it.

“No baths or showers for a week,” she tells Jimmy. “Unless you go buy plastic bandages at a pharmacy, and change the dressing on your wound after each wash. I want to see you back here next Thursday so I can remove the stitches.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Jimmy says mockingly. He shrugs his shirt back on, then looks at her with curiosity in his eyes.

“Don’t you want to know how I got this?” he asks.

Ha. Caroline turns her face away and smiles to herself. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that in the end, he’s just a teenage boy, with teenage boy reactions.

She turns back to him and raises an eyebrow. “Would you tell me?”

Jimmy purses his lips. “No.”

“Well then.” She hands him a prescription for Paracetamol, for if the pain gets too bad, then tells him to run along. She has other patients to take care of.

***

Jimmy keeps dropping by from time to time. Nothing as serious as the cut – one time, it’s just the flu, and Caroline almost chokes on giggles, seeing him sniffle and cough so pathetically. After a few years, he starts bringing his boyfriend, and that’s another matter entirely. She’s starting to suspect the man might be a cat – how he survived some of the things she’s seen him with, she has no idea. Then again, it must take a particularly resilient kind of man to not only live with Jimmy, but to be as devoted to him as Sebastian obviously is. 

She knows they’re criminals. She knows she should call the police on them. But she values her life – she’s not naïve enough to believe they would even hesitate one second before killing her if she pulled something like that – and she’s sworn an oath to protect and heal everyone, regardless of background. It’s not her place to decide that Jimmy and Sebastian don’t deserve medical assistance. 

Then, one day, Lauren pulls up in front of her practice with screeching tires and storms into her examination room.

“Caroline, come quick!” she shouts. “It’s my boss! He’s been shot, but he refuses to go to a hospital. Please, you have to help him!” 

Caroline runs outside and finds a middle-aged man with shattered kneecaps keening on the backseat of Lauren’s car. Together, they carry him inside, and Caroline does the best she can. It’s just first aid, but it’s something. 

“There’s a number next to my computer,” she tells Lauren, “call it. I can’t do this on my own, he needs a hospital.”

Even though he’s barely conscious, the man manages to shake his head. “No, no hospital.”

“Don’t worry,” she says soothingly, “it’s a private hospital, and they won’t ask questions. I’ve sent quite a few people to them already.”

Lauren barks instructions into the phone, then hangs up. “The ambulance is on its way.”

“Good,” Caroline says. She puts a hand on Lauren’s shoulder. “Do you have any idea who did this?” she asks. “I won’t tell anyone, I just want to be able to protect my patients, tell them who to avoid.”

“Of course I do,” Lauren says. Her voice is low and seething; Caroline hasn’t seen her like this since the time Nathalie cheated on her with a nurse. “We’ve had a few threatening phone calls; I even answered two of them.”

“And?” Caroline presses on.

“Moriarty.” Lauren spits the name out like it’s something poisonous. “Or more likely, Moran, his henchman. On Moriarty’s orders, of course.”

Caroline’s blood runs cold, and she sits down heavily on her desk chair. She knew they hurt people, suspected they killed, even, but this is the first time she’s seen their work firsthand. And the firm Lauren works at isn’t some awful, corrupt organisation, either. It specialises in defending abused women. How could Jimmy… How could Seb…

“Are you okay?” Lauren asks, sounding concerned.

Caroline takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

Lauren bends over and hugs her, a quick, reassuring hug. It’s grounding, somehow, Lauren’s familiar affectionateness. 

“Don’t worry,” Lauren says, squeezing her shoulder. “You’re not in danger, you’re just a doctor.”

Caroline swallows heavily, and nods. If only she knew…

 

VI.

Sebastian stumbles through her door, hand pressed against his lower back, and like every time she sees him lately, Caroline thinks not again.

“Got stabbed,” he grinds out, and lies down on the examination table.

She lifts the back of his shirt and hisses softly. The wound is deep; the knife sliced through the muscles just above his right hip. No wonder he is limping.

She stitches him up without a word. It’s no use telling him to go to a hospital; he won’t listen, and Caroline avoids talking to him as much as she can since she saw what he did to Lauren’s boss. 

Sebastian doesn’t make a sound either. He never does.

When she’s finished, he sits up and looks at her while she writes down her report in his file. 

“I want you to walk as little as possible in the next two weeks,” she says, without looking away from her computer screen. “Get Jim to take care of you, for once. Will do you both a world of good.”

She had expected a snarky remark, probably an innuendo, but there’s only silence. She turns her head to look at him, and her heart plummets.

Sebastian is crying. Hands in his lap, tears streaming down his face, shoulders shaken by silent sobs; he is the picture of despair.

Caroline’s first impulse is to wrap her arms around him, to offer comfort. But she doesn’t think he’d appreciate it, so she stays seated.

“What’s going on?” she asks, making her voice as gentle as she can.

“He’s dead,” Sebastian’s voice is thick with tears, but the fury beneath is indescribable. “Jim is dead. Shot himself in the head to prove a fucking point.”

He grabs the bottle of disinfectant and throws it across the room. It shatters against the wall.

The first thing Caroline feels, before surprise, even, is relief. She knows it’s bad; she knows it’s not rational, either – with Jim dead, someone else might take his place. Someone who doesn’t trust Caroline, or worse, someone who’d have her killed just because she was Moriarty’s doctor. But she still feels like she can suddenly breathe a little bit more freely. 

“I’m sorry,” she tells Sebastian. He looks up at her and furiously wipes his tears on his sleeve. 

“Yeah, I’m sure you are.” His tone is bitter, disbelieving, and she can’t even blame him. He knows as well as she does that she didn’t mean it.

Sebastian stands up and looks down at her. “Bye, Doctor,” he says. “Have a nice life.”

He’s halfway through the door when Caroline calls his name.

“Moran?”

He turns back to her, raising an eyebrow. It’s such a familiar gesture, so out of place on his devastated features.

Caroline looks him in the eye for the first time in months. “There’s no reason to follow him, okay?” 

Sebastian doesn’t answer, just nods stiffly. He must have sensed she didn’t really mean that, either.


End file.
